How the Mata Nui Online Game Defined Bionicle

In a time before time began, aka 2001, Bionicle came onto the scene while I was the wee age of 8. While I had decent experience with Lego, it was something I started to grow out of back then. Something about the overly toyish and colorful assortments of bricks rubbed my childish brain as a little too "for toddlers". So unless it was for Star Wars, I didn't care.

Bionicle, naturally, changed all of that. While the Bionicle crew were still the same old colorful pieces, its unique aesthetic and the fact that they were all buildable robot action figures gave Bionicle a feeling that ascended past traditional Legos. Or even Lego technic, seeing as later on, Bionicle would drop being a subtheme of "Technic" altogether.

The toy line itself was a pretty big deal, but something that made it feel ascended past its already ascended status was how it was a toy line with some deceptively well thought-out world building and lore. Bionicle's far from the first-ever toy line to have a story or lore to go with it, even within the Lego sphere, but it definitely runs with the concept harder than any before it. Even to this day, the only toy I can think that has lore to match Bionicle's is Transformers. And that has dozens of reboots and retellings under its hood.

Thus enters the Mata Nui Online Game, affectionately abbreviated to "MNOG" by fans, as silly as it sounds when you pronounce that abbreviation out loud. Mah-Nawg. It was released on January 1st along with the first wave of toys, and was developed by Templar Studios, which pretty much has this game and its sequel as their sole claims to fame. Oh and some other 3rd Lego game, but that's not the subject today.

MNOG was a web game playable directly on the Bionicle official website itself, and it actually got slowly updated over the course of the year, to give a sense of Bionicle as an ongoing epic that you got to see unfold in real time. I'm not entirely certain of how many updates there were or what each update entailed (other than an educated guess that the brief adventures in each village, plus the finale, were what the updates were), but the finished product basically plays like an open-world point-and-click adventure. The only overall goal being to solve each village's problem and then confront the finale.

Web games have a certain reputation that comes with them, especially licensed ones that are ultimately trying to be a commercial for something. And while MNOG definitely is that, the way it goes about selling plastic masked robots to young children feels so much more "artful" than your typical browser game. Which especially around this time, were usually a lot more loud about trying to attract a demographic perceived to have little to no attention span by featuring bright colors and loud sound effects. But MNOG has more faith in a child's intelligence than that. It knew Bionicle was for BIG, SMART kids.

The opening shot is attention-grabbing, but not in an in-your-face kind of way. It presents the player with a giant, opened pod washed up on the beach, with footprints in the sand walking out of it. Even if this is your first exposure to anything Bionicle, it grips your intrigue to keep exploring on your own. Should you choose to follow the footprints, you'll find a mysterious distant figure before losing sight of him.